1) Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of project control management.
2) Background
In this disclosure, a project is defined as a sequence of activities that must be implemented to complete the deliverables that comprise the project's main work product. Organizations usually undertake projects to achieve a benefit whose value exceeds both the cost of the project and the cost of the disruption caused by the project. The benefits from some projects can be substantial, such as the development of a new product that transforms an organization. Organizations usually allocate a budget and timeframe to complete the planned deliverables in each project.
In this disclosure, a project stage is defined as a sub-set of activities within a project that has a defined start activity and a defined end activity. The size of a project stage can range from one activity in a project to all activities in a project.
A shared service is an organizational function that provides a common service to multiple projects. For example, a design and engineering function may build generic computer servers and deliver them to application teams who can then change the generic configuration data to meet their unique needs before installing their applications.
In this disclosure, project control is defined as the ability to predict the actual cost and actual timeframe to complete the key project activities that are required to deliver the expected scope and quality. If a project is in control then the timeframe and cost to complete key project activities is substantially predictable.
In this disclosure, the term near real time refers to the predetermined time difference between an event and the response to that event. For each event, this time difference is predetermined by the organization that is undertaking the project (e.g., the project organization). For example, the project organization may specify that selected information about predefined project activities must be entered into the project activity database within 24 hours of the change occurring but management reporting may occur on a weekly basis. In this example, near real time is within 24 hours for entering project activities and 1 week for management reports. The same project organization may mandate that other information about predefined project activities must be reported more frequently or less frequently depending on the needs and expectations of that particular project organization.
In this disclosure, a project task is defined as a planned activity that is specified in a project plan. An action item is defined as an unplanned project activity that is not specified in the project plan.
In this disclosure, a project enabler is a resource that can impact a project activity. Examples of project enablers include project team members, project roles, organizational units, shared services, business procedures, business systems, project stages, project stakeholders and project suppliers. This list is not intended to be exhaustive or limiting. Other examples will be apparent to one skilled in the art.
In this disclosure, meta data is information about a project activity. Meta data can take many forms including dates, numbers, currency and text. This meta data is stored in the project activity database with the summary of each project activity. Examples of meta data include project name, project stage, user name, origination date and date updated.
The failure rate of enterprise projects is reported to be as high as 74% in PC Week (Dec. 5, 1999) and the success rate as low as 34% in studies such as the Chaos Chronicles Report 2003 published by the Standish Group. Moreover, only 16% of projects are reported to have a measurable influence on business performance (More failures than successes, TechRepublic.com, AMR Research). Failure is usually defined as not delivering all of the planned features and/or exceeding the budget and timeline by an amount determined by each publisher. Project failure can have severe consequences from halting the sponsor's ability to ship product for weeks (When bad things happen to good projects, CIO Magazine, Dec. 1, 2004) to almost bringing large organizations to their knees (AT&T Wireless self destructs, CIO Magazine, Apr. 15, 2004). According to the Standish Group, IT projects wasted $55 billion out of a total of $255 billion spent in 2002. Despite the huge cost associated with this high reported project failure rate, organizations feel compelled to undertake enterprise projects because the benefits can range from preventing an organization from failing to transforming an organization's fortunes. Since both the potential benefits and the potential failure rates are so high, failure prevention strategies are essential for any organization undertaking an enterprise project.
Organizations often implement failure prevention strategies by developing a risk management plan. According to the Project Management Institute (PMI), project risk is an uncertain event that, if it occurs, has a positive or negative effect on a project objective. The Project Management Institute is the leading global association for the project management profession. It creates project management standards and techniques and publishes The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK). This is an internationally recognized standard (IEEE, ANSI) that teaches the application of knowledge, skills, tools, and techniques to achieve project objectives.
For any given project, one of the responsibilities of the project team is to identify, analyze and mitigate risks. In addition, as the project progresses, the project team must monitor and control risks to maximize the probability of project success. The project team can use a number of techniques to manage risks including risk avoidance, risk transference, risk acceptance and risk mitigation. For example, the project team can change the project plan to avoid risks, transfer risk by subcontracting project activities to a more proficient third party, accept the risk by developing a contingency plan and mitigate the risk by taking actions to reduce the probability of the risk occurring or by reducing the impact of the risk event.
One example of a risk avoidance technique is to change the sequence of tasks in a project plan that may increase the total number of tasks and even increase the cost but will eliminate the need to perform the identified high-risk task. One example of a risk transfer technique is to subcontract the least predictable deliverables to a more proficient third party. For example, instead of accepting the risk of installing a complex software application, the project organization can subcontract the installation task to the vendor of the software application. The expectation is that the installation of the software is a lower risk activity for the software vendor who, for that software installation, is likely to have more experience, more knowledge and a higher skill set than the project organization. Engaging that software vendor under a fixed priced contract will also transfer cost risk for the installation activities from the project organization to the software vendor. In addition, if the fixed price contract is based on the required deliverables then that will help minimize the variability in scope and quality of the installation activities. One example of a risk acceptance technique is to accept that all project deliverables may not be completed on time. However, an appropriate risk mitigation technique is to add a time and cost contingency for all project deliverables where a risk acceptance technique has been applied. An additional risk mitigation technique is to manage the variability of the timeline for key project deliverables by controlling the completion time of said key project deliverables within the predetermined contingency. One additional benefit of being able to control the completion time of key project deliverables within a predetermined contingency is that the project timeline becomes substantially predictable and the associated cost of project services, including project management services, can become substantially fixed.
Accepting risk then applying controlling techniques to limit the variability within a predetermined contingency is a standard operating procedure for manufacturing processes. In fact, many manufacturers use statistical process control techniques to monitor the vital signs of their manufacturing process. The manufacturer uses these vital signs as an early warning system of possible risk events then they avoid the risk event by implementing corrective actions whenever any of those vital signs appear to be heading outside a predetermined control limit. The objective is to monitor performance and take corrective actions to keep the process under control.
In general, statistical process control is a method of monitoring a process during its operation in order to control the quality of the output while it is being produced—rather than relying on inspection to find problems after the fact. It involves gathering information about the process on a near real-time basis so that the operator can take action on the process. This is done in order to identify special causes of variation and identify other non-normal processing conditions, thus bringing the process under statistical control and reducing variation.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,956,251 and 5,581,466 teach process control systems that are applied to manufacturing processes but do not disclose the application of statistical process control techniques to project activities to provide access to objective project control data, facilitate project control activities, make project timelines substantially predictable, make the cost of project services substantially fixed, facilitate dynamic reallocation of project resources and indicate which project enablers are increasing project control and which are reducing project control. U.S. Pub. No. US 2006/0259336 teaches a risk management technique that includes building a library of common project activities and associating risk management information with each activity that can be shared and leveraged by different stakeholders. U.S. Pub. No. US 2002/0138318 teaches a risk management technique that includes tracking the occurrence of risk events then applying centrally managed mitigation strategies that change the project plan. U.S. Pub. No. US 2009/0222275 teaches a risk management technique that includes using risk information associated with sub tasks to determine the optimal schedule for dependent tasks in order to minimize variability of parent tasks. Organizations use a plurality of other risk reporting techniques including scorecards (U.S. Pub. No. 2009/0076867) that include key performance indicators and also risk ranking and rating systems (U.S. Pub. No. 2005/0065754). None of these disclosures teach the application of statistical process control techniques to project activities to provide access to objective project control data, facilitate project control activities, make project timelines substantially predictable, make the cost of project services substantially fixed, facilitate dynamic reallocation of project resources and indicate which project enablers are increasing project control and which are reducing project control.
U.S. Pub. No. 2003/0236692 teaches a workforce management system that uses a plurality of parameters to optimize the assignment of personnel to project positions. It does not disclose the application of statistical process control techniques to project activities to provide access to objective project control data, facilitate project control activities, make project timelines substantially predictable, make the cost of project services substantially fixed, facilitate dynamic reallocation of project resources and indicate which project enablers are increasing project control and which are reducing project control.
The aforementioned systems have a number of deficiencies including the inability to use statistical process control techniques to manage execution risk by tracking and reporting the completion of planned tasks and unplanned actions then implementing mitigating activities to ensure key project activities are completed within their predetermined contingency for timeline and cost. This approach to managing execution risk would significantly increase the probability of completing key project activities on schedule and within budget thereby enabling project resources to plan their participation in a project more accurately and complete their responsibilities within the allocated contingency for time and cost. This, in turn, would reduce the risk of cost and time overruns and therefore increase the willingness of subcontractors to provide fixed price project services including fixed price project management services.
Organizations try to manage project risk by compelling their project managers to develop detailed project plans and by instituting a range of project management procedures that range from project discovery and project initiation to project operation and project closure. However, if the project plan and the project procedures are not executed effectively then the project can quickly spin out of control and head toward failure. The project management office (PMO) in many organizations is therefore frustrated by their inability to access objective project execution data in near real time (defined as within 24 hours to 1 week for the present invention) without burdening the project with excessive management reporting that does not contribute to completing the project's deliverables. The ideal situation is to use information, which is a normal work product of a project, to predict whether the project's deliverables will be completed on time and within the allocated contingency for cost and timeline. Given that even well-planned projects can quickly spin out of control; measurement, reporting and mitigation of the execution of key project activities must be formalized and performed in near real time in order for the project organization to implement timely corrective activities.
Accordingly, there is a need for a system that limits timeline variability for key project deliverables and provides access to objective project control data, facilitates project control activities, helps make project timelines substantially predictable, helps make the cost of project services substantially fixed, facilitates dynamic reallocation of project resources and indicates which project enablers are increasing project control and which are reducing project control.
The applicant is not aware of any other commercially viable system that addresses the shortcomings of the prior art and also includes the features stated above. It is therefore an object of the present invention to set forth a system that enables an organization to measure, report and mitigate the completion of planned and unplanned project activities in near real time (defined as within 24 hours to 1 week for the present invention).
It is another object of the present invention to measure, report and manage the number and importance of planned and unplanned project activities in near real time.
It is yet another object of the present invention to measure, report and manage, in near real time, whether the number of planned and unplanned project activities is increasing or decreasing.
It is a further object of the present invention to measure, report and manage, in near real time, unscheduled project activities. It is another object of the present invention to measure, report and manage, in near real time, activities associated with unauthorized project activities.
It is object of the present invention to monitor the timeline performance for project stages and take corrective actions to keep each project stage under control.
It is another object of the present invention to make project timelines substantially predictable and the associated cost of project services, including project management services, substantially fixed.
It is yet another object of the present invention to increase the transparency of information about project activities. This information will be made readily available to management with less filtering caused by organizational and personal bias. The project team will enter all key project activities into the present invention and update the status of those project activities in near real time. Project team members have an inherent incentive to keep this information current because it is their responsibility to report and manage risks in their area of responsibility. If a risk event occurs and that risk was not identified or mitigated effectively by the responsible project resource then that project resource will have to answer to management. It is therefore an object of the present invention to encourage project resources to record objective project control information that is unfiltered by organizational and resource bias and make that information available to organizational management in near real time.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide access to objective project control data in near real time without burdening the project with excessive management reporting that does not contribute to completing the project's deliverables.
It is an object of the present invention to provide project control reports that transform raw project activity data into concise management reports that clearly reveal the source and impact of project control issues.
It is another object of the present invention to enable organizational management to use project control information and reports to determine which stages of a project are in control and which stages of a project are out of control.
It is yet another object of the present invention to enable organizational management to use project control information and reports to determine which project enablers are driving project stages out of control and which project enablers are contributing to bringing project stages under control. It is another object of the present invention to capture much of this information directly from project team members and better understand the cause and effects of control trends then diagnose and link said causes and effects then recommend a corrective plan. Enablers are the causes and project results, such as over budget and late completion, are the effects.
It is a further object of the present invention to enable organizational management to use project control information to dynamically allocate resources among projects as the relative level of control changes over time for different projects.